When it was first announced in 2016, I immediately thought making a ride based on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon seemed like a very odd choice. Universal has a plethora of IP they can create new and exciting attractions from and to use a late night talk show for the basis of a ride seemed a bit misguided. Well, the ride is officially in Technical Rehearsal (Universal's way of saying soft open) and I got a chance to check out the new ride.
Race Through New York replaces Twister: Ride it Out, an attraction that long overstayed it's welcome and wasn't much of an experience. Twister became a bit of a cult classic thanks to cheesy acting by the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in the attraction's preshow rooms. The attraction itself was nothing more than a special effect display that was kinda fun to watch, but not worth waiting in any sort of line for. What I always found curious was that the building for Twister was huge, but the attraction itself didn't really take up much of the space inside the massive sound stage. Well, Universal took what was an outdated and not exactly popular attraction and turned it into a new ride that will very much impress with it's queue setup and waiting area entertainment, but might underwhelm those expecting a groundbreaking new ride.
Your Race Through New York experience begins with you obtaining a return time at a kiosk located to the right of the attraction entrance. This is a one hour window similar to Disney's FastPass+ system. One member of your party scans their Universal ticket and selects how many people are in your party and which window they would prefer. Then the kiosk prints out a ticket to hold onto. The process took maybe a minute or so, which was wonderful and will supposedly come to Universal's new app once the attraction officially opens. When your window begins, you return to the attraction entrance and enter a lobby waiting area. You are then presented with a colored ticket that features one of the five colors in NBC's logo. The lobby waiting area is essentially a free flow museum to NBC's The Tonight Show and features props and displays for each of the show's hosts. This is a nice way to enjoy waiting for your color group to be called before moving on to the next room upstairs.
Once your group is called by having the colors around the room change to your color, you move to the second floor of the building. In this room, there are a number of couches and USB charging stations where guests can take a load off and charge their devices. There are also big tablet tables where you can play little games. The highlight of the room is a small stage area where you can watch live performances by The Ragtime Gals and Hashtag the Panda as well as a sampling of sketches and moments from Fallon's take on the Tonight Show, This is probably the single best part of the attraction as a whole. You honestly forget that you are waiting in line for an attraction and can easily enjoy everything going on around you. Once the room changes to your color again, you head to the last lobby room which is the preshow for the ride itself.
The ride is set up similar to Universal's Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, but instead of one large room with multiple vehicles, you have a large room with one single very large vehicle. The "moving theater" seats 70 or so guests and there are two theaters, so everyone should be able to get on the ride fairly quickly. Similar to Disney's Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, the ride is in 3-D and features individual seatbelt restraints as opposed to lap bars like Universal's other simulator attractions.
The story of the ride itself is that you are racing Jimmy through New York and checking out all of the sites and sounds and of course, running into trouble. It features cameo appearances by various characters used in The Tonight Show and some in theater effects such as water and the smell of pizza, which was actually a lot better than I expected. The ride ends with a surprise roller coaster ride from the moon back down to The Tonight Show studio.
Having been on a large number of simulator attractions, this one just wasn't particularly memorable to me. I know that attraction storylines aren't typically anything groundbreaking, but this attraction used a very classic trope and didn't do anything particularly exciting with it. The motion of the ride is quite mild for what is supposed to be considered a thrilling attraction. It felt like a smoother and tamer version of Star Tours. The in theater effects were effective and the pizza smell was actually quite impressive when compared to other attraction smell effects like at Disney's Soarin' Around the World.
The biggest complaint I have about the attraction is that with the addition of Race Through New York, Universal now has six 3-D attractions at Universal Studios Florida (Despicable Me, Terminator 2 3-D, Shrek 4-D, Transformers: The Ride 3-D & Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts), which seems a bit excessive. I honestly do feel like Race Through New York didn't need to be in 3-D and would have been just as effective, but I understand why Universal felt the need to make it 3-D. Skull Island: Reign of Kong, which opened last year, had a similar lukewarm reception so it might be time for Universal to tone down the number of 3-D screen attractions it is adding to the parks because it is beginning to seem like that's pretty much all they do these days.
Overall, the queue and waiting system for Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon is a huge step in the right direction for how future theme park goers will experience new attractions, but the ride itself, although an improvement over Twister, wasn't much to behold. It's not a bad ride, but it's fairly forgettable and not worth standing in a long queue for, if there was a queue to begin with.
Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon officially opens on April 6th, 2017.
Written by Chris Coburn
The story of the ride itself is that you are racing Jimmy through New York and checking out all of the sites and sounds and of course, running into trouble. It features cameo appearances by various characters used in The Tonight Show and some in theater effects such as water and the smell of pizza, which was actually a lot better than I expected. The ride ends with a surprise roller coaster ride from the moon back down to The Tonight Show studio.
Having been on a large number of simulator attractions, this one just wasn't particularly memorable to me. I know that attraction storylines aren't typically anything groundbreaking, but this attraction used a very classic trope and didn't do anything particularly exciting with it. The motion of the ride is quite mild for what is supposed to be considered a thrilling attraction. It felt like a smoother and tamer version of Star Tours. The in theater effects were effective and the pizza smell was actually quite impressive when compared to other attraction smell effects like at Disney's Soarin' Around the World.
The biggest complaint I have about the attraction is that with the addition of Race Through New York, Universal now has six 3-D attractions at Universal Studios Florida (Despicable Me, Terminator 2 3-D, Shrek 4-D, Transformers: The Ride 3-D & Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts), which seems a bit excessive. I honestly do feel like Race Through New York didn't need to be in 3-D and would have been just as effective, but I understand why Universal felt the need to make it 3-D. Skull Island: Reign of Kong, which opened last year, had a similar lukewarm reception so it might be time for Universal to tone down the number of 3-D screen attractions it is adding to the parks because it is beginning to seem like that's pretty much all they do these days.
Overall, the queue and waiting system for Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon is a huge step in the right direction for how future theme park goers will experience new attractions, but the ride itself, although an improvement over Twister, wasn't much to behold. It's not a bad ride, but it's fairly forgettable and not worth standing in a long queue for, if there was a queue to begin with.
Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon officially opens on April 6th, 2017.
Written by Chris Coburn